


No Apologies For Being

by Myth979, osheamobile



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Justice League - All Media Types, The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Barry Allen Is A Huge Dork, Blackmail For Fun And Profit, OCs like whoa, Pizza Discourse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-11 21:50:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7908850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myth979/pseuds/Myth979, https://archiveofourown.org/users/osheamobile/pseuds/osheamobile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Just be yourself." Wise words for a variety of situations. But when you're a metahuman with an exploitable ability, being yourself has a lot of unintended consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Rocky Beginning

**_Central City_**

 

When the ice broke apart, everyone trapped on the bridge could see that the fight was over. The day was saved, the commute home from work could continue, and everyone cheered, ignoring for the moment the hours of delay that would result in the police taking down license plates for future witness statements.

Well, Lynn mused as she put her phone away, no longer recording what she could see of the Flash's triumph over Captain Cold, _most_ everyone cheered. Everyone that was not currently being hoisted into a police helicopter, at least.

"We're going to be late." 

Lynn sighed as she glanced over to the passenger seat. "This kind of thing happens all the time, I'm sure there'll be a rain check or something." 

Gangly and awkward, her brother Corey was already taller at sixteen than she was in adulthood, and he was folded in the front seat the way only surly teenagers could pull off. "Rictus is only in town tonight, they fly to Midway tomorrow morning. A rain check isn't going to help." 

"We'll get a reimbursement, at least?" she tried, not really expecting it to cheer him up. "And tell you what, we can probably show a copy of our police report and get some free t-shirts or something." 

"I don't want a free t-shirt." 

"Don't be silly, _everyone_ wants a free t-shirt." 

Corey sighed. It was a sigh of ages, the sigh of a teenager who knows that nothing good will ever happen again. A sigh of terrible things yet to come. 

She knew that sigh. "What?" 

"You didn't even want to come in the first place." 

"I did too want to come," Lynn protested. "I've always thought that death metal bands should use more calliope." 

"You don't have to make fun of it." 

"I really do." Lynn shook her head. "But it sounds fun and I'm happy to take you. Even if it sounds like a monumentally bad idea." 

Corey scrunched his face up in the most incredulous expression a sixteen-year-old could make - which, considering teenagers, was an impressive accomplishment. "Circus metal is not a bad idea. It's genius."

"Corey, it's pretty much a suicidal move to make music based off the Joker without his permission, it'll attract attention and then where will you be?"

"It's not like they perform in Gotham, Lynn."

"No," Lynn agreed. "It's not a death sentence to be a juggalo in the rest of the world, it's just tacky."

Corey turned away in a huff. "It's not tacky."

"They dye their hair green and their first album is called 'Life's a Gas'."

"I can't go anywhere with you," Corey muttered. "Just take me home."

Lynn winced. She'd been so distracted lately that she hadn't been around for family much. This concert was supposed to have made up for that.

She'd tried to be the attentive big sister, and that hadn't worked out like she planned. Oh well. She'd try again with something else.

"I'll turn us around as soon as we get moving and off this bridge," she said. "We'll figure something out."

"Whatever."

She glanced back over to where the cleanup crews and the police were working. The Flash was still around, helping direct traffic, and—

"Is he _posing for pictures_?"

Corey glanced over, his sullen mood temporarily forgotten. "The Flash? Yeah, there he goes."

Lynn chuckled. "At least someone's having fun still. Hey, want to try to get a selfie with him?"

As they watched, the Flash put his finger to the earpiece of his hood. He stayed like that for a minute, then took his hand away, spoke quietly to the police, and disappeared across the bridge in a red blur and flash of yellow lightning.

"...never mind," said Lynn. She saw that traffic was starting to move at her section of the bridge - finally - restarted the engine, and put the car into gear. "Looks like he's needed elsewhere."

 

* * *

 

It was later. Awkwardness had happened.

Lynn remembered what it was like to be a teenager - it wasn't _that_ long ago, after all. So she didn't really blame Corey when, after they eventually got back home, he stormed off to his room and slammed the door, not wanting to be disturbed for the rest of the evening.

She resisted the urge to shout at him. 'I'm doing the best I can,' was the first thing that came to mind, and summarily discarded. It wouldn't do anything but make it worse.

Similarly dismissed were 'When I was your age', 'There will be other concerts', and 'You really shouldn't idolize someone who, statistically speaking, might have killed our parents'.

Even though she _really_ wanted to say that last one.

Instead, she started dinner. Corey might be upset with her, but he was still a teenager, and teenagers were endless calorie vacuums.

She turned on the TV to drown out the oppressive silence.

"— _known associates of the criminal Edward Nigma, the 'Riddler'. Unfortunately, the Batman had disappeared by the time we arrived on scene. Neither he, nor Superman, could be reached for comment._

" _This is Nora Heart, WGCS News, Metropolis._ "

Lynn shook her head. Something had to be up if Batman was in Metropolis. She didn't know much about the elusive hero, but everyone knew that it took something big to leave Gotham City unattended.

She frowned. Come to think of it, when the Flash left the Gem City Bridge that afternoon, he was heading west. It couldn't be—

The pot boiled over.

"Shit!" She quickly turned down the heat and grabbed a dishrag to mop up the spilled water. Fortunately, the dishrag was on its hook right next to the stove. Unfortunately, it caught the handle of the pot on the way down and dumped the entire thing all over the floor.

Lynn stood there, just staring at the mess. "Okay," she said, after a moment. "Okay, sure, that's about right."

She cleaned up the mess and left the offending pot and dishrag in the sink to think about what they'd done.

Upstairs, Corey's bedroom door opened. "What smells like burning?"

"My dignity," said Lynn. "How do you feel about pizza?"

"...I'm not hungry."

'Liar,' Lynn thought. Out loud, she said, "Well, tell you what. I'm going to head over to Jitters and relax for a bit, and I'll pick something up on the way home. Sound good?"

Corey was wavering: Take-out was super-effective against teenage grumpiness. "...maybe."

"Excellent," said Lynn, taking it as a win. "Call my phone if you need anything, otherwise I'll be back in a few hours."

 

* * *

 

She did not go to Jitters.

As much as she practically ran on coffee, the day had already shaken Lynn up more than she was comfortable with, and like she had said to Corey, she needed to unwind.

Instead, she drove southeast out of the city, through the endless corn of the Midwest to the series of lakes about an hour away. There was a clearing a bit off of a hiking path that she liked, and she parked and made her way there.

Technically the clearing was a state park, with the protections granted by the government and fines for littering and wanton destruction. In reality, nobody ever came through - it was too far from any farms or towns for most people to even know it was there.

Besides, Lynn always put things back to normal.

The sun had almost set, casting the sky in the pinks and oranges before twilight. The woods were quiet, save for a few scattered bird calls, and she was far enough off the highway that nobody would drive past and see what she was doing.

In the dying light of the evening, she danced.

It wasn't a true dance - there were moves she cribbed from music videos, her high school dance classes, and the occasional martial arts lesson. There was one sequence that was pretty much straight from a Jane Fonda workout video. It wasn't perfect. It wasn't pretty. But it was the smooth choreography of careful practice and self-confidence, and as she danced, so did the ground underneath her.

The grass rippled as the dirt beneath it bobbed in ocean-like waves, subtle shockwaves sending out concentric circles. With the sudden raising of her fists, spires of granite burst from the ground, lowering again with another motion of her arms.

The dances and the sudden motions weren't necessary, of course. She got the idea from a cartoon. But they helped her focus, and the mental shortcuts she assigned in her head had been instrumental in helping her get a handle on her powers when they first manifested.

She never went in for metahuman testing. She didn't feel like she needed to. She was just herself, plus magical rock bullshit. Where her powers came from didn't matter, because she knew who she was. Knowing what she could do was just a part of that.

It was secret. Nobody else's business. It was just for her.

By the time she got tired and stopped, it was already dark. Her endurance was improving, she could tell - she used to get winded after only ten minutes, but her phone said she'd been there for just over an hour.

That was excellent. She was getting better, she knew she was. Not for any particular purpose, at least that she had in mind, but it made her feel more comfortable with herself. More confident.

Even if nobody else noticed.

 

* * *

 

The seismograph was acting up again. It never failed - an ironic phrase, Cisco Ramon realized as he stared at the piece of junk - to start beeping at him right when he was getting some _proper_ science done.

The worst thing was, he _knew_ the thing should be working properly. He'd replaced every component of it over the last month, it was practically a new seismograph out-of-the-box.

"Hey Caitlin, you know that saying about how if you replace every part of a seismograph, it's still the same seismograph?"

"I don't think that's how that went," said Caitlin, not even looking up from her papers. "You're thinking of ships."

"I'm going to ship this piece of crap back to the junkyard in a moment, I tell you what."

"Well, what's it doing?"

Cisco turned back to the readout. "It keeps saying there's an earthquake out about a hundred miles southeast of here. Which A: no, we're in the Midwest, and B: don't you think we'd have felt it?"

Caitlin looked up, an eyebrow raised. "You remember we've got impact shielding to protect the particle accelerator from tectonic disturbances, right?"

"I'm aware of that," Cisco said. "But the entire city doesn’t, and you'd think it would be on the news. I've got a Google Alert for any kind of weird weather or natural disaster near us, and I haven't had a single thing."

"So what if it's not broken? What would that mean?"

"That there's some sort of super localized geological disturbance out in the sticks," said Cisco.

Caitlin shook her head in frustration. "So...?"

"So either it's broken, or there's wackiness somewhere in the Missouri foothills." Cisco shrugged. "I'm angling for the former, this thing's been acting up for years."

"Cisco."

"What? I'm just telling it like it is. Doctor Wells picked it up from some sort of garage sale or something, it's _ancient_."

Caitlin shook her head. "What if there’s something out there and we need to take care of it?"

"Then I'm putting it on the Barry pile and letting him deal with it when he's not playing poker with Superman and Batsy."

"That is incredibly irresponsible," Caitlin snapped. "What if there's a dangerous meta on the loose?"

"Caitlin, dearest, platonic love of my life," Cisco said, shaking his head in frustration. "If there was a dangerous meta, and we went out there with the van, what would we be able to do about it?"

There was silence.

"Barry pile?" Caitlin squeaked.

"Barry pile."

 

* * *

 

Lynn was in a much better mood when she climbed out of her car, dinner in hand. It was soothing, practicing her abilities, and she definitely made the most of it while she was out.

The lights in the house were off. Corey must either have gone to bed early, or he was sulking. Heavens only knew how many times Lynn had done the same when she was his age. Sitting alone in the dark, feeling sorry for yourself? That was an American _right_ , protected by law.

Still...

"Are you hungry?" Lynn called out as she reached the door, pulling her keys out to unlock it. "I've got pizza—"

The door swung open at a touch.

She checked the doorjamb. Shattered. Someone had forced their way inside. The lights were all out.

She dropped the pizza box and repositioned the keys in her hand, the two largest and sharpest in-between her clenched fingers as makeshift claws.

Somebody was in her home.

Somebody was in her home, with her teenage brother, and she was going to do something about it.

She ghosted through the house. Twenty-six years in the same place went a long way in learning exactly which floorboards were the noisiest, and no self-respecting kid would ever let herself be found out sneaking midnight trips to the fridge.

Living room was clear. Bathrooms were both clear. Kitchen was empty and surprisingly untouched - some of the most expensive items in the house were in there.

Anxiety wrapped itself in a hard knot just below her lungs as she checked the bedrooms. The master bedroom, undisturbed for the last three years, was empty, and so was her own, which left only one.

She shifted the keys clenched in her fist as she silently made her way to Corey's room.

The light flicked on before she entered. Lynn blinked the spots out of her eyes, trying to quickly adjust before she was attacked.

She wasn't attacked.

There was a woman sitting in a chair set up in the middle of the room. It was not a chair she recognized. It was not a chair they owned.

"Good evening, Ms. Hatford," said the woman in a clipped, precise voice. She was poised, elegant, very sure of the power of her situation, and unconcerned with anything that Lynn might do in retaliation. "I was wondering when you would return."

"Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?" Lynn demanded. "What have you done to Corey?"

"Your brother is safe," said the woman, reaching into the pocket of her perfectly-tailored business suit. She pulled out a phone and turned the screen to face Lynn. It was already opened to a video screen - her brother was in a small room, sitting awkwardly on the edge of an uncomfortable-looking bed.

There was an armed guard with him.

Fuck. It looked like a live feed, too.

"For now," the woman amended. She clicked the phone off and slid it back into its pocket. "Whether or not he stays that way is entirely up to you."

"Let him go," Lynn growled. "Let him go or I swear—"

A perfectly sculpted eyebrow lifted. "You'll what? Tear up the countryside looking for him? Throw rocks at anyone in your way? My employer has anticipated all of that."

Lynn shook her head. "And who's that?"

"Someone who requires your services," said the woman. "Services that you will, of course, be providing, if you ever want to see your brother again."

Corey's room was on the second floor. The house was made of brick, but it took too much time and effort to work with brick, and she'd only get one surprise attack in.

It would have to come from underneath. One spire, directly through the flooring. The costs to repair the house's foundation would bankrupt her, but she could deal with that later—

"I wouldn't try it," the woman said, jarring Lynn out of her thoughts. She smiled, not unkindly, but it was still cold and dispassionate. "If anything happens to me, my associate has orders."

"I wasn't doing anything," Lynn lied.

"You were thinking it." The hand darted back into the expensive suit jacket and pulled out a card. It was plain, with nothing printed on it save a telephone number. "Call in three hours. You will be given instructions. If you do not follow them, your brother dies. If you go to the police, your brother dies. If you speak to anyone in a cape or a mask... you get the idea. Are we clear?"

"Crystal," said Lynn. "Get out of my house."

"Of course," said the woman, standing up. She left the chair and the card behind. "It's a pleasure to be working with you, Ms. Hatford."

The door hadn't finished closing before Lynn broke down.


	2. That Sinking Feeling (or, Lies, Damn Lies)

**_Gotham City_**

 

Andrea Fisk scribbled notes as quickly as possible, glancing up at the video feed every couple of seconds to make sure she had the timestamp right. It wouldn’t do for her to write LIE in all caps as a comment on the man’s creative profanity.

One room over she heard a discordant note. She jotted down the time and hit the intercom button twice in quick succession. On the video feed, Batman stopped the man he was questioning mid-word.

“Want to try that again?” he asked.

“I don’t know anything about Muñoz,” the man tied to the chair in front of Batman said. He sounded sincere to her ears. Her brain said **_LIE_ **.

She hit the intercom twice again.

“We know you know something about Muñoz,” Batman said reasonably enough. “You worked with him for two years.”

“So?” the man asked. “Doesn’t mean I know where he is.”

Andy hit the intercom once and jotted down, _anxious, defensive, slippery_ . Batman radiated nearly nothing: if she concentrated she knew she would hear _calm_ or maybe _ready_ , which was difficult to quantify to someone who didn’t have Empathy with a capital E.

By the time the interrogation was over Andy had five pages of notes, front and back, single spaced, college-ruled. By the time Batman had returned for her after dropping his unfortunate victim off wherever he tended to drop off murderers who left hiding bodies to other people, she had recopied them more neatly onto six pages. She liked to be thorough.

“You didn’t need to let me know he was lying so often,” Batman said. “I’m surprisingly good at it.”

“Well then, next time you don’t need me you can leave alone with my dinner and Netflix,” she retorted, handing him the notebook but stuffing the pen into her purse. He didn’t call her on her pen thievery.

“You were watching that teen show again. I did you a favor.”

“Just because it has historically inaccurate everything doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it,” Andy said with a mostly straight face. “The love triangle might have been resolved for me tonight, you don’t know.”

“You say that every time.”

“It could happen at any time, that’s sort of why I’m invested. Can I go home, or do you need me to be your mobile lie detector some more?”

She heard the brief flash of amusement, still more muted than most people’s, before he gestured towards the door. “I’ll take you home.”

Normally, Andy would call that kind of presumption bullshit and walk right on by, but this was Batman, and it was midnight in the middle of Gotham. She could probably get home with no problems by projecting a field of _don’t notice me_ , but probably was not a guarantee. Also, Batman’s brain was restful to be around.

She had the feeling that wasn’t a normal feeling on the subject. Still. She let him shadow her to her door.

 

* * *

 

**_Central City_ **

 

There was a time where Barry speeding into the Cortex would set off a chain reaction of pure chaos. Drinks spilled, papers flying about in a gust of wind, muffled high-pitched shrieks of surprise; that sort of thing. These days...

Well, these days S.T.A.R. Labs invested heavily in paperweights.

"Nothing," Barry said as he straightened the cowl of his speedsuit in the display case. His tone was apologetic and fully sincere. "I went all over the woods, and there wasn't any kind of damage consistent with that strong of a seismic disturbance."

"No trees overturned?" Cisco asked, the faintest glimmer of hope left on his face. "Giant crags in the middle of the woods? A very tiny volcano?"

Barry blinked. "Why would there be a very tiny volcano?"

"For that matter, why would you _want_ a very tiny volcano?" added Caitlin.

"Dude," Cisco said, holding his hands out in front of him, framing an imaginary headline. "World's greatest science fair project."

"There wasn't a very tiny volcano, Cisco," said Barry. "I would have noticed something like that."

"Okay, look," Caitlin interrupted. "Can we all stop saying 'very tiny volcano'? The words are starting to lose all meaning."

"Fine."

"Alright."

"Thank you." Caitlin ran her fingers through her hair and went back to her reports. "How was Metropolis?" she asked, almost too casually.

Barry blinked. "Hmm? Oh, it was fine, why do you ask?"

Also almost too casually. Because he knew why Caitlin was asking. And he knew that Caitlin knew he knew why she was asking.

"Oh, just making sure you had a good time," she said, her eyes firmly on her screen.

"What with your secret projects with your spandex club," said Cisco, clearly losing patience with the dance of subtlety.

Two could play at that game. "What projects?" he asked, tilting his head the way that Caitlin always said made him look like a confused puppy. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Don't mess around," Cisco said. "You've been hanging out with the capes and I want details!"

Barry reached back behind his head and scratched the back of his neck. "I'm not really at liberty to talk about any of that," he said. "There's kind of an honor between vigilantes, you know? Like how I couldn't talk about the Arrow."

"We're not asking for their names," Caitlin started.

"Speak for yourself."

"It's just, we get a message from Metropolis or Gotham and you take off without letting us know why, or how long you'll be. Sometimes you come back injured." Caitlin had turned around at this point and was pleading with her eyes. Tell me, Barry, they said. Tell me why you keep getting hurt.

Barry couldn't stand it when she got into full older sister mode. She wasn't even all that much older than him. He was going to cave, and she knew it. That was half the reason she did it, after all.

"Well--"

An alarm sounded on Cisco's console.

"Oh thank God," Barry said, unable to keep the relief out of his voice. At the combined glares of Team Flash, he amended: "I mean, how terrible, what's going on?"

Cisco dropped himself into his chair, his fingers flying over the keyboard. "Landslide," he said. "Biggest we've ever seen in the tristate area."

"I thought the seismograph was broken," Caitlin said.

"It is. This is a Google Alert I set up after we put that on the Barry Pile to track any kind of geological disturbances in the news." Cisco followed the links and skimmed the news report. "Blackstone Park, the wildlife conservation tower. No tourists since it's after hours but there's maintenance people trapped in the rubble."

In a flash, Barry had grabbed his suit and put it back on with a grimace. They'd have to Febreze the heck out of it later, he'd just finished using it. "On it."

As he sped out of the Cortex, he heard Cisco shouting: "Don't think we're done talking about the Superman thing!"

 

* * *

 

**_Metropolis_ **

 

"...so thankfully it was the middle of the night, and the only people there were the night cleaning staff. I got there in time, nobody was seriously hurt."

Batman frowned. "Convenient timing."

"I know," said Barry. "But that's not the weirdest thing."

"What's the weirdest thing?"

"And why," added Ollie, his expression darkened underneath his hood, "did you feel the need to bring twelve pizzas?"

Barry paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. "Because three of them are for you guys? Look, Superman brought sandwiches last time, I thought that was a regular thing."

"This is only our second meeting," said Ollie. "Why would you think that it would be a regular thing?"

"Arrow."

Batman wasn't their leader. They specifically didn't have a leader, that was the point of them meeting in a neutral place like Metropolis. The only one who could claim a leadership position based on location was Superman, and he had deferred from word one.

Ollie shut up anyway.

A voice rang out from the upstairs window. "Hey, pizza!"

Barry gave Ollie the cheesiest grin, and not only because he had just taken another gooey, drippy bite of his pizza.

There was a blur, and suddenly Superman was seated at the table, a huge slice of pizza in his hand, already taking a gigantic bite.

"See, Superman likes my pizza. I told you this was a regular thing."

"Even though you got the wrong kind," said Superman, indignant despite the fact that he was halfway through his second slice already.

"What?" Barry shook his head. "This is the finest stuffed pan butter crust baked to perfection for an hour with vine-ripened tomatoes right in the sauce. Pride of the Midwest, right here."

"You're not supposed to eat pizza like a casserole," said Superman, daintily wiping the last flecks of sauce off his face. "It's not real East Coast style unless you can pick it up and fold it."

"You're _from_ the Midwest, you traitor."

Ollie pinched the bridge of his nose. "Are they always going to be like this?"

"Yes," said Batman. He didn't offer any further opinion.

"Look, Kansas has its strengths, but pizza isn't one of them. I had a revelation when I moved to Metropolis - the street food is _so much better_."

"If I wanted to eat a greasy napkin, I would," retorted Barry, closing the empty lid of his third box.

"Flash."

Barry held his hands up. "Alright, alright, but he started it."

He glanced over at Superman, and had to shake his head in disbelief. That wasn't Superman sticking his tongue out at him. He had to be hallucinating.

"The rock slide." If anything, Batman's voice was even more clipped. Barry hadn’t thought it was _possible_.

"Right. The weirdest thing was, two days later, it happened again over in Illinois." Barry tapped a button on the display, and the map zoomed out. He tapped a location, and the computer highlighted it for everyone. "Sinkhole under the I-55 wind farm. Again at night, again with zero casualties."

"You think there's a connection." It wasn't a question.

"One's weird. Two's a coincidence." Barry shrugged. "I have a feeling we're going get to 'Three Times Is A Conspiracy'."

"And you're asking me for help," said Batman. Still not a question.

"I'm Forensics," explained Barry. "The evidence is inconclusive but suspicious, and you're the better investigator. I was hoping you'd have an idea where I can go from here."

"I have a couple cases going right now, but I'll take a look," said Batman, noncommittally. "Let me see your findings and I'll get back to you."

"I didn't think geological disturbances was your area of expertise," said Superman.

"I'm diversifying," Batman deadpanned.

 

* * *

 

**_Lupine River_ **

 

Lynn's phone rang. She wasn't surprised - she'd spent the last hour driving a hundred miles southwest of Keystone for her next assignment, and her "handler" always called precisely at the scheduled time.

She had turned her phone off on the road in a fit of sullen rebellion, but it still rang, right on schedule. She knew it would.

She waited until the third ring just because she could. Take that, faceless terrorist leader.

"I'm here," she said, answering the phone. "And we need to talk about this one."

"A geological survey fifty years ago showed uncommon tectonic activity underneath the main building," came the robotic voice, ignoring her. "Tragically, a sinkhole formed under the plant. Destroy the target and leave no survivors."

"You didn't tell me this was a nuclear plant," Lynn hissed, staring at the rounded smokestacks venting clean white water vapor into the atmosphere. "What am I supposed to do about that?"

"We recommend being far away from the explosion," said her handler. The robotic overlay did nothing to filter out the sarcasm.

"Give me something else," Lynn said. "No matter what I do, people are going to die."

"Your objectives have been given," said the voice on the other end of the line. "Report when they have been completed."

A click, and the line went dead.

"Fuck." Lynn threw the phone down into the passenger seat, the cushioning fortunately keeping the thing from shattering into a million pieces.

That was how Lynn felt. Shattered. For weeks now, she had been taking these calls, performing acts of ecological terrorism against power plants and other utilities. Pretending to be sick for the extended travel. Pretending her brother was sick, to keep the school from sending someone by to check on him.

She had done her research on all the sites that her mysterious malefactor sent her to. The only things connecting them, that she could find, were that they were all sponsored by Lexcorp. Whatever these terrorists had against him, she had no idea, but they really wanted to stick it to the guy.

It made her sick. She was trapped, she knew she was trapped, and there was no way out of it. They had her brother, and they were going to kill him if she didn't do just one more job, one more natural disaster. It was going to be just one more job over and over again until she got caught. She knew it. They knew it. Everyone knew it. But there was nothing she could do about it.

She got out of the car - parked far enough away from ground zero that she'd be able to get back to it and get away - and started walking up a nearby hill.

The nuclear reactor was in the middle of a plain, far enough away from anything dangerous, but Lynn didn't need immediate proximity to start an earthquake. She just needed a fault line, or something resonant underground to simulate one.

It didn't take her long to find an appropriate vantage point. River to the left, forest behind her, a somewhat steep decline over rough terrain to get down to the nuclear plant. It would have to do.

Lynn's movements were economical, forced. A clenching of her fist, to focus her mind into tightening its grip on the surrounding earth.

There. Right where the instructions said it would be, a buried instability in the bedrock. It would be so easy to exploit it, to turn a fracture into a fault that ran directly under the reactors.

It would be so easy to murder everyone working the night shift.

"I can't," she whispered, loosening her connection to the ground. "I'm so sorry, but I can't do it."

"That's good to hear," said a deep baritone from directly behind her. "Maybe you'd like to tell me what it is you can't do?"

Lynn tightened her mental grip on the earth around her and pistoned the ground behind her. No thought, no plan, just get away. A panicked reaction.

There was a muffled crash as whoever stood behind her landed in the forest. She turned around slowly. Please be a security guard or a hiker, she thought, a lonely hiker who is lost and somehow around at... three in the morning...

Instead, she saw a dark shape nestled in the branches of the nearest tree. Black on dark grey, blending almost perfectly into the night. A cape that obscured the line between person and the surrounding darkness, making it impossible to see an exact shape. A distinctive cowl and mask over a square jaw.

She couldn't see his eyes, but she could tell he was glaring at her.

"I just attacked Batman," she whispered to herself in horrified realization. "I. Am going. To die."

 

* * *

 

Geokinesis, thought Batman as he extricated himself from the treetops. He had faced geokinetics before with mixed results.

He should have anticipated the presence of one at this site. He had calculated an 87% chance that it would be the next target, but he had geared for tech.

Rookie mistake.

The geokinetic raised her hands in self-defense as she saw him drop from the trees. The lack of any kind of electromagnetic signature suggested magic or metahuman. Neither of which was precisely his area of expertise.

There was a reason he kept a current list of amenable psychics, sorcerers, and metahumans in Gotham.

"Back away," the woman quavered, "or I can't guarantee where you'll land this time."

Fear. But not fear of him, per se - at least, no more than the usual fear he inspired amongst the average citizens of Gotham.

What scared an ecological terrorist more than when Batman was standing directly in front of her? That required further investigation.

Flash owed him far more than just pizza. That was for certain.

Something was going on here, and it was larger than one lone woman taking out a nuclear power plant. He clicked his suit's camera, taking a rapid burst of images to analyze later. He covered that action with a deliberate step forward. "You're going to have to come with me," he said. "Whatever your problem with the power company is, we can work it out."

"Stay away!" yelled the woman, stomping her right foot towards him in a reflexive panic.

The ground rippled in a shockwave. Batman took a leap over it and landed in a crouch.

There it was again. Terror, but not of him. A half-second glimmer of relief in her eyes - that she hadn't hurt him, maybe?

Investigate further.

"Are you working alone?" he asked, taking another step forward. He watched her movements carefully - the geokinesis was linked to her motions, which lent more towards the metahuman theory than magic.

Watch her decide. Watch her choose. And then—

There. A flick of the fingers, and two spires of rock burst out of the ground, where he would have been standing had he not leapt forward at her.

If he could reach her, knock her out, that would solve most of it. However—

A wall stretched up between them right as he reached her. His fist cracked against the stone - bruised, at least, but the reinforced spines in his gloves absorbed enough of the shock to keep his bones intact.

He retreated once more, waiting for the woman to press the attack.

She did not.

"Just leave me alone," she pleaded. "I don't want to do this."

Indicating the fight, yes, but the tone of her voice signified more.

"Who's putting you up to this?" he asked, his voice a bit more harsh than he otherwise would have angled it.

A flinch. Eyes shifting away. "I can't— nobody. Leave me alone! I'll go away, we can pretend this never happened, okay?"

"I can't do that," said Batman.

The woman let out a sigh of resignation. "No, I didn't think so. Worth a shot." She raised her hands, and—

It was methodical, Batman could tell. Efficient. Robotic, even - she raised spires and launched boulders, trying to keep him from her, but never pressing an opening. He even left some for her, testing this theory, but she ignored them, trying to keep him at a distance.

The landscape roiled, changed, as she altered it to suit her needs. Whoever this woman was, she was practiced. She knew what she was doing. She slid around the hilltop, never staying in the same place twice, and it wasn't until she reached the far side of the clearing that he struck.

He'd been waiting for it. She reused the thrown rocks whenever she could, and they were all scattered across the north side of the hill. She wouldn't be able to call them back in time before he reached her—

The ground under his feet rocketed up like a springboard, deflecting his bullrush and launching him over her head. He twisted in midair, bringing his feet underneath him for a landing, but when his boots touched dirt, they kept going, sucking his legs underground and locking him in place.

The woman relaxed her stance. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I have to— I have to go."


End file.
